Monday, October 01, 2007

Gasahol, again

Soaring food prices, driven in part by demand for ethanol made from corn, have helped slash the amount of food aid the government buys to its lowest level in a decade, possibly resulting in more hungry people around the world this year.

The United States, the world’s dominant donor, has purchased less than half the amount of food aid this year that it did in 2000, according to new data from the Department of Agriculture.

“The people who are starving and have to rely on food aid, they will suffer,” Jean Ziegler, who reports to the United Nations on hunger and food issues, said in an interview this week.

Corn prices have fallen in recent months, but are still far higher than they were a year ago. Demand for ethanol has also indirectly driven the rising price of soybeans, as land that had been planted with soybeans shifted to corn. And wheat prices have skyrocketed, in large part because drought hurt production in Australia, a major producer, economists say.

The higher food prices have not only reduced the amount of American food aid for the hungry, but are also making it harder for the poorest people to buy food for themselves, economists and advocates for the hungry say.

As Rush Limbaugh has said time and time again, liberals are only concerned with feelings. Results don't matter. They feel good making fuel out of corn because someone told them that was a good thing to do. After hyping everybody up about it, they get in their Gulf streams and disappear.

What happens after that doesn't concern them. That's why you can't have an intelligent discussion with a liberal. If you tried to talk to them about food prices and starving people, they would just keep yelling that global warming is killing the planet.

If you tried to point out that the rain forests are being destroyed at a record rate by farmers wanting to plant corn to sell for fuel, they will tell you that New York City will be underwater by the year whatever.

If you try to discuss the cyclical changes in temperature before man became a "greenhouse gas" producer, they will start yelling about how SUV owners are funding terrorism.

Growing and burning many biofuels may actually raise rather than lower greenhouse gas emissions, a new study led by Nobel prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen has shown.1 The findings come in the wake of a recent OECD report, which warned nations not to rush headlong into growing energy crops because they cause food shortages and damage biodiversity.

Crutzen and colleagues have calculated that growing some of the most commonly used biofuel crops releases around twice the amount of the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide (N2O) than previously thought - wiping out any benefits from not using fossil fuels and, worse, probably contributing to global warming. The work appears in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics and is currently subject to open review.

What I'm hoping is that we can keep this discussion going until their heads explode. I would pay to see that!